There are over 100 million horses, donkeys and mules in the world today and owners of these animals can be found on almost every continent and in almost every society. The Horse Course will cover many unique aspects of equine ownership and touch upon the science behind many of today’s management practices.

AK

Such a good informative course about Equids. I look at them in a completely different way now, than how I used to see them earlier. All credits to the course and the Professor.

AL

Jun 04, 2016

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Excellent course! The course content was informative and the instructor kept the flow going at a nice pace and was interesting to listen to. I highly recommend this course!

From the lesson

Equine Behavior and Training

The topics this week will focus on equid behavior and movement. Understanding how equids relate to their environment and communicate is critical to training and management. We will start this week by examining the basic equine senses and communication. Then we will discuss normal and abnormal behaviors and the basic psychology used in training. We will finish the week discussing the basic gaits and how these animals move.

Taught By

Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.

Professor

Transcript

This is gonna be the final lecture of the week and it's kind of where it fits here. And that's where we're gonna be talking about the gaits of the horse. So what's a gait? You hear this and people say, it's a gaited horse or five gaited horse or it does this or that. And you hear this word gait and basically, that's how the animal moves. And a gait kind of has a repetitive rhythm and it's very distinct. And it's really we're looking at the patterns of how those legs move. So you have this four legged animal and they have different gaits. They move differently and so it's important to understand in horses and the other equids that they move in these different distinct gaits. Now, there are the natural gaits and then there's the artificial gaits. We're only gonna have time to really cover the natural gaits and the artificial gaits. Any of these artificial gaits you can find online, you can find fall patterns. And actually some really wonderful videos of the horses moving. So I suggest if you want to see some of these really flashy amazing gaits, you go and look on the Internet for that. Now, before we jump into the gaits, we'll kind of talk about just some basics of breaking down a gait. And the first is the beat. So we'll say it's a two beat, three beat, four beat. And what that means is each foot hitting the ground. So in this example here, here is the hoof striking the ground here. And that's one part, that's actually a four beat because the horse is running. Now, here is a horse that's trotting and that's one that we call two beat because the hooves hit the ground at the same time. So it's a two beat gait and we'll get a little bit more into that here in a second. Now, the next part of that breaking down a gate, is a step. So when the horse takes a step, that's imprint of the fore legs or the hind legs. So here the distance between there is a step. And then you'll hear a stride. Like we hear stride length especially in thoroughbreds in racing stride length and a lot of our champion horses have really amazing strides. So the stride is the same foot, so if you imagine this right hind rear leg when that horse lifts it up. And strikes the ground again, probably somewhere up here. That distance is the stride. Now, the other two things to look at is and which I think is really cool is the phases of the stride. So there's two phases and this is the weight bearing phase. And this picture always amazes me when you imagine a 1300 or 1200 pound animal, all of that weight on that one leg and just how amazing it is that they can do that. So that's the weight bearing phase and then there's the swing phase or what we call the airborne phase. And that's where the horse is completely in the air like it is flying, like it's levitating. And that's where all the legs are up off the ground. So that's the swing phase or airborne phase. Now, briefly mention here a little bit of history and Eadweard Muybridge talking about this airborne phase. I guess the story was that there was a bet between two people that either the horse either had all their feet on the ground at one time or at least one foot on the ground at all times or their actually airborne. And this was actually the first film to show that there was an airborne phase. That the horse actually is in the air with all of the legs off the ground. So that's where you see this old video or this old video. Excuse me, old film. Didn't have video back then, old film of that. Now, the first gait we'll talk about is the walk, it's very simple. It's a four beat gait and if we go in the proper order it's left hind, followed by the front left and then the right hind and then the front right. So it's one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. And I have some videos of this so you can see it. And we're gonna show you a horse at a walk. So see if you can just follow the foot fall pattern. One, two, three, four. And we'll play it a couple of times. So you can just follow those feet. And then I'm gonna show it to you at half speed. So here's what it is at half speed. So it'd be much easier for you to follow that. So one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. And you can see that's a horse at the walk. Okay, all right. So this was the unique one, and the trot's probably one of the most comfortable gaits for a horse to move at. And that's just a two beat gait and it's the paired diagonal feet striking and leaving the ground at the same time. So these feet move together and hit the ground at the same time, especially and the twos. So you can see the trot here and I'll play this a couple times. And this is at full speed. So again, it's a little bit harder to kind of catch if you're not used to seeing this. So one more time. See if you can follow those feet and see the two beats. And then here you are at half speed. Much, much easier, so then you can see the diagonals striking the ground at the same time. So that is a trot, two beat gait. So then the next one is a canter or sometimes we call it a lope and this is a three beat gait. Now, this one is a little different. So you have the first and third striking the ground independently. So the first obviously hits first. Then you're gonna have the two diagonal limbs strike the ground. So this would be two, then that third independent leg will strike the ground. So we go one, then two, then three. Now, there also with this and we'll get this into into the sprint too we'll talk a little bit of this sprint too is there is a right lead versus left lead. So you'll hear that especially at show competitions and the way to remember to see if a horse is in a left lead or a right lead. So the independent limbs are the lead limbs. So if I look at the independent limbs on this horse or the independent front limb, here is on the right, here is on the left. So this front limb, this would be a right lead, this would be a left lead. So if we look at this in full speed it's very, very kinda hard but try to see you know where, what lead this horse is in. So look at those diagonals and independent feet. And let me show you at half speed this will be much easier for you to see. So which feet are in the diagonal? Do it one more time. So that horse looks like it's in a left lead. Now, the gallop or run is a full bore sprint, four beat gait, and what's different than say, the walk is instead of the walk goes from hind, front, hind, front, it is hind, hind, front, front in the sprint or the run. So again this is very, very similar to the canter lope as far as there is a right lead and a left lead. And the right lead footfall pattern is here so it goes one, two, three, four. And the way I try to remember that is the last leg to hit, in the front, is the long stretch leg, that's usually how I determine if an animal's in a right or a left lead. So the right is here and then if you look at the one, two, three, four, the left. That left is the most front as it stretches. Now, we'll look at this video again. It's not a video but this old film and try to see. It hits this horse. Well let's go to half speed. So now, you can really see it. It hits with its left hind first, followed by its right hind. Then hits with his left front then reaches with that right front. So that's a right lead. So at the gallop or run. Now, backing up pretty simple it's a two beat gait, it's a reverse of the trot. We're gonna look at this video and we don't need to slow this down because the horse is going slow enough, but you see backing up it's just the reverse of the trot. So one more time. So it's a two beat gait. Now, these artificial gaits are sometimes called man made and there are a bunch of them. But some of the most common ones is the pace, the rack, the stepping pace, foxtrot, and there are others. So again, you can look at these on the Internet and see how the horses are moving. Sometimes horses will develop these as natural gaits too, like the pace you can see them once they're trained. They'll move around that way sometimes on their own but typically they're induced during riding. And again, these gaits were actually designed with these breeds in mind to make riding much, much smoother. So riding a gaited horse is like the Cadillac or the fancy cars of the horse industry where you just kinda sit back and you can barely feel the horse moving as they do these fancy gaits. And that's kinda why they were designed with that. So that's it. So that's the end of week three. And talking about behavior and just some reminders that you go ahead and take quiz three. And then look at the Training Plan video that's up there for this week's assignment. And don't forget that you need to complete your peer review assignments by the end of this week. For the health care plans and introduction. And then this week's assignment will be due by the end of week four. Peer evals will due by the end of week four. All right, look forward to seeing you next week. Take care.

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